Beautiful Life...

Sometimes time increases it's speed. So fast that I cannot spot when it went. So fast that I realise I'm just sitting here while it's passing me by. So fast that I could hear the sirens of helplessness playing in my ear.

It's yesterday that I was 4 feet 11 inches, stretching myself at 12 in the night to make sure I get to 5 feet as soon as possible. And the next day I open my eyes, I've well crossed 5 feet and everything around me has changed. My life is perfect. The best girl in the world, no parent problems, friendship intact, no extra-controversial school complaints. Love my life. Wonder why people get depressed at all. Can't they see how beautiful life is? And don't they realise that every bad phase of life has to pass? God bless them.

Wake up next day. Strange. How come time passed so fast? Plug the charger out of my cell phone's butt and check the date and time just to make sure I'm not fifty years ahead of my last remembrance. Nah. It's just April. Just been sleeping four months. Find a page under my bed. Tears trickling down my face. Arjun's dad is gone. How could that have happened? No not possible... FUCK! No no no. Call up Yash anad sk. Yeah he's gone. Gone forever...

And I cant remember anything again. Open my eyes. Grab my cell phone. July 22nd.

1 Message Received. She's still angry about the fight.

I sigh. Punch the wall beside my bed. Aah my fingers hurt. I try to remember what had happened. I have blur visions of me crying. I love her and because of some reason I can't be what I actually am. And this pressure is getting the nerves inside my head to explode! Im losing her! No No No! I cant live without her! I feel so guilty... I hurt her... Never realised Im so addicted to her! She can't leave me! We're the perfect couple! I'll be responsible! I'll be perfect! Back to what I was! Just come back please! Please! I promise I can take care of you! I know Im saying the same things all over again! But damn I do love you! Believe me... Who will answer my stupid questions? Who will make me feel better? Who will be you?


And I open my eyes today. It's raining outside. I watch the rain drops falling on my window pane. Plug the charger inside my cell phone's butt. But this time, I keep the cell phone back to its place. This time I dont want to know what is up with the present. Im too scared. Too scared to step out or look under my pillow or check my cell phone out. So I just lay there watching the rain. Slip my ear phones on and listen to some soft music. Blur visions of remembrance come again... My adademics suck... Get caught up in bogus school controversies... I convice her to stay... She tells me that this time she's just staying because Im begging... I remember writing somewhere that I dont deserve her at all... I hurt her so much... I'm hurting her so much... I get the feeling that many things have gone wrong since the last time I woke up...

The music stops all of a sudden and my cell phone starts vibrating. It's her.
"Good morning Aniket!"
Her voice brightens up my world. Like a butterfly in a garden of thorns, like the colours of a kaleidoscope trickling into my colourless world, like the first ray of sunshine through the dark clouds, like the joy of rain in an empty desert... She steps inside my world...

And although probably everything in my life is going wrong at this moment, at this moment, I am peaceful. Happy. Just lying here listening to her blabbering away about her dream and her instructions on how to shampoo my hair. Wont deny Im scared of the future. Wont deny Im excited about it too. Wont deny that I do care about it. Just a bit.

She ends the call. The most chirpiest 'I love you' ever.
I smile and get up.

I was wrong. How could I even doubt for a moment?

Life Is beautiful...

Hate, Death and Despair...

FUCK!
I heard my mind screaming out that one word that couldn't possibly carry all my frustration.

I lay on the roof of my building in that small space with no boundaries where all the satellites were kept. A girl I know from the other society seemed to wave her hand wildly to just make me wave back. I could have just waved back so that she would be satisfied and possibly would go back. But right now, I wanted to throw a brick at her face.

Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. I had a fight with my girlfriend and it didn't seem to get better. I was having fights with her quite frequently those days and I hated it since I was madly in love with her. Insecurity was at the highest level, but there seemed to be something else that killed me more than the insecurity.

I closed my eyes and let my mind go off to flashback...


THE FIRST NIGHT


I carried the oxygen cylinder while the ambulance guys and my best friend Arjun's brother Maanik carried the stretcher on which lay his father with his hands forced to be kept on his stomach by a pair of elastic belts.
"Move the goddamn sofa Aniket! And open the door!" Screamed Maanik.
I did as he instructed me to do and we carried went down the stairs and stared as they pushed the stretcher into the back space of the ambulance. I handed them the oxygen cylinder. One of Arjun's cousin brothers got into the ambulance and we turned as the ambulance went away behind us...

We climbed back the stairs.

Arjun: Thanks for staying back man.
Yash: Thanks? You're such an asshole man.
Me: Hope nothing is wrong with him... When do you think he'll be back?
Maanik: Is just a minor problem man! He'll probably be back in 2 days or something!
The hospitals will probably throw him out! Or he'll slang them so much that
they would have to throw him out!
Arjun: Haha yeah. Probably...

We ordered two large pizzas and coke and munched and joked till 1. We played like a mini version of cricket and for some reason I couldn't stop laughing and we all laughed like patients from mental asylums so oblivious to what was about to happen... So oblivious to angels mourning death right above our heads...

We were in the middle of a cricket match when suddenly the doorbell rang. Yash opened the door and Arjun's aunt entered. She asked Arjun and Maanik to pack their bags as they were going to stay with them for the next some days. We were sad on the sudden separation which would lead to the loss of all the joy in the coming few hours...

And another thing was that me and Yash decided that we would sleep over at my place now. But none of us wanted to go home.

I and Yash had the same thing in our mind. Tonight would the night we were going to enjoy all night. Tonight would be the night we would rule the streets all night! Tonight, we would not be going home!

We faked calling at my place and telling my mom that we're coming back. Arjun's aunt dropped us right outside my society. We got out of our car and hugged Arjun.

"'Everything's going to be fine yaar.' Yash said. 'Don't worry. Call us in the morning, ok?'"
Arjun kept staring at the ground and said in a rather depressed, low tone.
"Something is definitely wrong. Otherwise auntie wouldn't have come to pick us up. I know something is wrong..."

Before we could say anything, he quickly got into the car. He went away.

We waited until the car went out of sight. Tonight was our night now!



THE ORANGE LIGHTS AND DOTS.


We walked through the golden light of the streets first and talked about the current problems we were having. The first forty minutes were awesome... And the time after that was HELL!

We had nothing to talk about and the mosquitoes apprised us to the fact that our decision was deep shit. We felt sleepy and we were as stupid to walk a long way in those forty minutes never realising that we had to come back the same distance!


At 4, we reached my place and rang the doorbell. My mom opened the door and looked damn confused. We said we'd explain everything tomorrow morning and went to my room upstairs, as sleepy as rabbits during winters and as lethargic as sloths.

We both stared in wonder at the heavenly mattress on which we rested. We thanked the person who invented the fan and promised to hail the guy who made the air conditioner.

At 7, we both woke up but none of us wanted to go to school. We decided we wouldn't, but a call from Maanik and a steady command left us no choice but to go there.



DEATH


10: 30 AM. Our maths teacher calls me and another of my classmates outside.

"We just got to know that Arjun's father expired... Dont tell anyone... He doesnt have a mother either, so please help him get through this when you meet him and..."


I felt myself falling to the ground and tears crawling down my cheeks. I spoke and joked with him every single day and it was a rule to go to his place after school everyday and have a bit of lunch with him. We just saw him like a few hours ago! He couldn't be dead!
I saw Yash running and fall to the floor as Udit told him what had happened.
I couldn't stand there with all the noise. I ran to the ground and Yash followed...
We both stopped running near the stable and cried silently...
There was no where to go... He was dead. No more. What would happen to Arjun and Maanik, both in their board years, we didn't know. We knew nothing...
He was dead, and his absence is all that was present in our mind... Death had caught us off guard, and it made us know what pain was. Death had brought the deepest fears of our mind. Death had made us hate it more than what we had anticipated.






It's 4th June today. Arjun and Maanik have long gone to Bangalore to stay with one of their relatives. We spent my birthday together, which was like 3 weeks ago. We speak on the phone and he tells us he wants to return and we tell him we want him to come back. I'd let him smoke and booze as much as he wanted if he came back. I'd pay the table money in the pool games we'd play and I'd download Chains of Olympus for his PlayStation as many times as he'd tell me to. But I guess I can change nothing. Neither can Yash, and nor can Arjun. Everything is over, and we all have to take the blow as well as we're expected to.


Thank you Anshika, Arjun, Yash, and Gurinder for all the support you've given me.
I love you guys...
I'll always be there for you... No matter what.

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
-Charles Caleb Colton-

Me: The Average Teenager...

(Firstly. Try to understand the basic idea I'm trying to spread. If you don't get that, this is just a piece of shit.)


(This is inspired from the darkness around me. My friends. The people I see around me. They seem so depressed. Yes, maybe I don't know what they're going through because everything's so fine with me. Or maybe because I'm too young and immature to understand. But maybe I'm too engrossed in the flame of the candle rather than the darkness just beneath it. Never say 'I guess my life's cursed' when you're down; as you never say 'I guess my life's blessed' when you're flying. This is to the teenagers that I see around me, who've given up. Who cannot see the beauty of the darkness in their despair and agony over the negativity. This is to all the teenagers who think the dark is a bad place, and that they belong there...)

Hello. I am the average teenager. I stood in the middle of the road. 5 o' clock beeped my digital watch. When I stared ahead, I saw the slight shimmer of light as the morning sun kissed the horizon. And as I looked back, I saw the road still dark, the rays still unable to reach the dark road.

I turned back. Went to the dark. Brooded, cursed the area where the light couldn't reach. I looked at the dirt on the road. At the street dogs looking for food. At the empty effect of the darkness. At the cold I was offered. Cursed again.

1. But I dont have the answer to why I'm not looking at the beautiful mysticism of this road. The dew on the grass habituating on the sides of the path. The stars smiling at me from above. The moon fading away. The earthly smell of wet mud. I tied a black strip around my eyes. Now I could see only the darkness. Now I could criticize the road as much as I wanted to.
Didn't I know that the light would come if I just wait a little? More importantly, did I dig too deep in that dark hole in that short period of the darkness, that I could never emerge wholly into the light when it seeped through?

2. But I dont have the answer to why I am here when I could have gone ahead. I could have gone ahead instead of coming back. I could still run ahead. But I wanted to experience the dirty feeling. I wanted to brood. I wanted to sit and cry and criticize the roads so black and bumpy. I didn't go ahead.
I slept through the days, and came back every night to criticize the road, but never dared to wake through the light to understand that there is the light to enjoy too, and not just the dark to curse...